A Slow Burn Love Story

I’m just going to say it: for most of my life, I couldn’t have cared less about the State Fair. Every year, as we slid into another hot and sticky August and small talk changed from weather to fair food, the idea of going sounded borderline idiotic to me. Why do it? Why spend the money? Why experience the parking nightmare? Why wait in line for the greedily expensive yet somehow still disappointing food while risking death by heat stroke because there isn’t any free water in sight? When I did go, it was usually at the request of someone else, and usually at night for a concert at the Grandstand or for the rides at the Midway; neither was anything to write home about. We have better amusement parks and music venues aplenty in these cities, I would tell myself. So, the Fair didn’t excite me; it annoyed me, and if I was there for some reason, it just made me anxious.

Growing up, we weren’t a big Fair family, and maybe that’s where all of this begins. I simply knew it as that one really crowded place with that big green and yellow slide we went to a couple of times. And as I got a little older, I think I started to take pride in the fact that we were absent from it most years, like we weren’t one of those Fair Families in the same way we weren’t one of those Disney World families. I remember thinking we were cooler, and we did cooler things. I went more often as a middle-schooler and high schooler because that’s what my friends were doing. But in those days, the Fair became another one of those places where, instead of enjoying the company of my friends, I spent too much time pouting over whatever boy’s undivided attention I wasn’t getting. That wasn’t the Fair’s fault, but it connected the place to memories and regrets that had nothing to do with it. By the time I was a young adult, and for a few years, I openly looked down upon the Fair and any one of its religiously obsessed fans. If someone asked me if I was going, I’d proudly huff, “No way.” Frankly, I was a jerk about it.

But this perspective changed in 2014. That year, I had developed a side curiosity about organic farming and learned the Fair had a building that catered quite well to that interest. I remember not knowing who to invite to go with me just to visit the Agriculture Horticulture Building and not get a Pronto Pup. So I went alone. Maybe that’s part of why it ended up being kind of magical. The flowers, the apples, the crop art, the bees, and, of course, that year for me, the big one: the University of Minnesota’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS). I left with an apple rollover and honey sticks in hand, a million pamphlets in armpit, an apple cider freezer pop in my belly, a small jar of local honey in my backpack, and only about $20 poorer. It was this pivotal moment for my perspective of the Fair. And although those pamphlets sat in a closet for years, only to be thrown out after organic farming was officially a pipe dream of my past, I still gained a lot from that day. And after that, I continued to visit almost every year. I found the Fine Arts Building! “There’s a Fine Arts Building!?” I found the Creative Activities Building! “There’s a Crafts Building!?” I remember exclaiming these things excitedly and garnering some strange looks that said, “You know there’s a map, right?” or “She must be from Wisconsin…” One year, I saw Bat for Lashes and Depeche Mode play at the Grandstand. The tickets were somewhat affordable, the sky was beautiful, and we got away with a simple warning for smoking a joint. The year I worked for a brewery, I biked to the Fair, had a complete blast from morning to night, helped myself to way too much to drink, and at one point may or may not have decided to take on the role of birthing coach by loudly cooing at and comforting a giant pig who was not actively giving birth. One of those embarrassing memories you’re glad you can laugh at because you were in good company at the time. Another year, I held my coworker’s hair as she puked into a garbage can at the Midway between laughs. I screamed, “I love She’s Having a Baby!!” at Kevin Bacon the year the Bacon Brothers played for us for free at the Leinie Lodge. All memories I’ll cherish and some I’ll get to cringe at forever.

And then, I met someone. As it turned out, he was one of those people who loved the Fair. We were on the fairgrounds the first time we held hands. I remember the feeling of our hands fitting together like two magnets finally connecting. A couple of years later, we danced late into the night to George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic while I was seven months pregnant with our son. Another free concert at the Leinie Lodge. And now my son has been outside of my belly for nine years, and he’s growing to love the Fair too. And this year was the most fun we’ve had with him there yet. And yes, you heard that right earlier: I said I saw George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic FOR FREE.

This year, I went to the Fair twice, and I could have gone again. I went once with my family and once, as is tradition now, alone to the Agriculture Building. And for the first time, I pointed a camera at it all. The people, the food, the animals, the buildings, the rides, and the atmosphere. There is a oneness here, a camaraderie of all of us Loons shuffling around together in the heat. People aren’t angry as they stand in line for an hour and a half for a donut; they enjoy talking to each other. They aren’t disappointed if the donut isn’t any good; they still get to say they waited in line for an hour and a half and provide their own food review to anyone who was not brave enough to wait as long as they did. The line is a social opportunity to get to know the other people as crazy as you are. The crowdedness isn’t crowdedness; it’s closeness. The sweating is your body glitter for the day. It’s all a part of your perspective of the experience.

Once you stop fighting the Fair, you start loving the Fair.

And best of all, I don’t have to give up being pretentious, I’ve just found something new to be pretentious about. I get to be pretentious about being Minnesota-born, pretentious about knowing the secret walkways, the parking tricks, the money-saving tips, how to get from one place to another without the maps (well…sometimes, let’s be real), where to find the food they didn’t mention in the paper this year—the list is endless.

And I must say, my all-time favorite part of the Fair, the part that makes my heart swell the most, might be all the little reminders of where I am. The maroon and gold, Twins hats, North Stars jerseys, Prince’s purple, all moving through the crowd. And my favorite: the glimpses of Snoopy stuffed animals tucked under children’s arms, resembling the same ones we hugged at night when we were kids. All of them reminders that when I’m here, I’m truly home.

-Liz Lenihan